Today we went for our first swim. It’s still cold [the water temp is now 64 degrees] and the wind was still blowing today, but we just couldn’t stand it any longer. So, we took the plunge into the icy depths of the pool. We both waded around in the shallow end fist where it’s only about 3.5 feet deep to get used to the cold. Rick submerged his body first and I followed within a few minutes. The dogs went wild, running back and forth, barking furiously, and they all seemed really concerned. Hailey was the funniest and we were sure she was going to jump in with us. But alas, we had no joiners in the pool. Every lap that we did Hailey was always waiting at the end of the pool and gave us nose licks, as if to say, are you guys okay in there?  what are you doing?  Too funny. Here is Rick trying to entice her into the pool. It didn’t work.

We swam for awhile, but WHEW, I didn’t realize how out of shape I was until I started swimming laps. That’s a lot of work! I’m just glad to know I can still swim since it’s been many years! You’ll be glad to know I did end up wearing one of my L. L. Bean swimsuits instead of going naked. Too cold. We had visions of late-night skinny dipping going through our heads about a month ago. I think we’ve put those plans on hold for awhile. Maybe in August.

We didn’t get any takers for our contest to guess which dog would be next, so how many of you guessed Bode? Alex? I swear, just when we thought the entire day had gone by without a single dog in the pool, our hopes were splashed [instead of dashed] by yet another dog/pool incident. Rick had just fed the dogs their evening meal and let them outside. I was in the office and heard them barking which is isn’t quite normal at this time of day. I went into the kitchen and the pitch of their barking changed. Not the dogs’ normal barking. We looked at each other and we both thought POOL! Rick looked out the kitchen window and said DOG IN POOL! We rushed outside to see that the solar blanket was a total mess and pulled halfway up the length of the pool. There was Bode, treading water frantically in the deep end right up next to the edge. He looked ready to go under, so I didn’t get the camera and Rick hurried over to him to lift him out. Rick said his eyes were as big as saucers. If we hadn’t thought we was in jeopardy of going under, Rick would have led him by the collar to a good “getting out” place, but it wasn’t obvious that he was okay with the whole thing. Poor Jo-Jos!

It was only when I was toweling Bode off that we realized that Alex was ALSO soaking wet up to his belly. Hmm…something fishy here. I wish we knew what had happened since we think they both ended up on the solar blanket somehow and Alex just managed to get off before the blanket gave way. I guess they need constant supervision until they all go in the drink at least once. I know you must be getting tired of hearing about the dogs vs the pool, and frankly we are getting a bit weary with worry as well. But, hey, I think we are making some kind of progress since we haven’t seen the same dog end up in the pool for the second time! Err…uhm…maybe I shouldn’t say that just yet as I may be tempting fate. Or the Dog Water Gods. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

I haven’t written much about “Life in New Jersey.” I’m always meaning to, I just haven’t gotten around to it. Today as I went about my normal every-day routine, I was reminded once again about some of the things that I love about living here. Take the grocery for instance. It’s a grocery not much different than King Soopers back “home.” At least at first glance, that is. Grab a cart for yourself and let me show you the highlights!

First of all, the entrance routes you right straight past the bakery where all kinds of baked goodies reach out to grab you. Sometimes these items just jump up into the air and literally throw themselves into my cart as I try to hurry past them. I just can’t bring myself to put them back after all the effort they’ve made to escape from the boring confines of their display [grin]. For me it’s particularly hard because there are all kinds of Italian-style cookies and confections that I had growing up as a child in New York, that I haven’t seen in years and years and had totally forgotten about. It’s a bit like pushing a cart down Memory Lane. I have to steel myself against it all sometimes, especially as I go by the Kaiser roll section, the crumb buns [like smallish crumb coffee cakes with a layer of crumb topping on them that takes up about 2 inches of their 3 inch height], or if they have just put out fresh Black & Whites. What? Don’t know what Black & Whites are? They call them cookies but they are really more like small iced cakes that have one half iced with white icing and the other half with chocolate icing. Yummmeeee! Unlike cookies because the consistency is like cake batter, but they are only about 3/4 of an inch thick and quite large, about 5 inches in diameter. Here is one before I gobbled it up:

Enough about bakery items!

This grocery store plays oldies over the sound system, mostly hits from the 60s and some 70s. It’s not uncommon to find folks singing along as they push their carts up and down the aisles. I’ve even caught myself singing right along with them! Today there was an oldie from Tommy James and the Shondells that reminded me of my first “real” boyfriend. The other day I heard a song I don’t think I’ve heard in decades: Itchycoo Park. Anybody remember that one?? Maybe I’m showing my age here!

In the produce section,there are smooth, elongated globes of little baby eggplants [both white and purple], large bundles of asparagus [again two colors: white and the usual green], and baby artichokes. Today they had a huge display of portabello mushrooms and I couldn’t resist buying one. The best thing is buying basil. Instead of already cut basil in a plastic case at an exhorbitant cost, here you can buy a gorgeous basil plant, roots and all, in a clear plastic open-ended sack for around $2.99. Just put it in your window and add water to the roots when they get dry and it will last a couple of weeks!

Veal is plentiful here and there is always a good selection of breasts, shanks, chops, and scallopine. Another thing that you won’t find back in King Soopers, is meatloaf mix [or it can be used for meatballs]. This is a package that consists of three kinds of ground meat: beef, pork & veal, all about 1 pound each, and trust me, it makes great meatballs and meatloaf! The fish counter has fish I have never seen before, such as blue fish. Most everything in there is fresh and not frozen, and just about any kind of fish you might imagine.  One of my favorite things to buy is a fresh filet of sole stuffed with shrimp. There are clams galore, but I don’t know what to do with them yet. That needs some exploring.

Then there is what I call the “Italian aisle” because it’s jammed full of all shapes and varieties of pasta, all kinds of sauces to go with it [like clam sauce, pink vodka sauce just to name a couple that are unusual to me] and all kinds of imported Italian jarred delicacies such as 15 different kinds of bruschetta toppings, fire-roasted peppers, cherry peppers stuffed with mozzarella and proscuitto [these are HOT!], and so many other things I can’t list them all here.

Finally we come to the check-out. Here if someone forgot their little grocery discount card, the checker will just ask the person in back of them if they can use their card! Imagine how that would go over in Ft. Collins. But people here just hand over their card to help out someone else. You want to use my card? no problem, here ya go! Amazing. You are also expected to help sack your own groceries, so no lounging around as your groceries whizz past on the little conveyor belt. Get to work! We’re used to the question paper or plastic?, but here it’s a combo of both. They put a paper sack inside the plastic sack for heavy items. That way you have the strength of the paper sack, but the practicality of the handles on the plastic one. Makes sense to me!

After the grocery store I head to the gas station to fill up the tank. We still have Colorado plates on both vehicles, so we look a bit out of place. I pull up to the pumps and the attendant comes over to see how he can help. What?? you’re saying to yourself, isn’t she going to get out and pump the gas herself? NOPE, sorry, against the law to do that here in Jersey. No self service allowed! HAH, I can get used to this real fast, especially when it’s raining. Anyway, I am digressing as usual. As I put my window down he says to me, long way from home, aren’t you? I reply that in fact, I am really only a few miles from home since I live here now. He continues to chat me up about Colorado, did I miss all that snow on top of the mountains? was I ever afraid of starting an avalanche with just my car radio? Then he goes on to tell me that his boss went to Colorado last year. Oh, I say, what did he think? did he like it there? He looked at me a bit queerly and said that no, as a matter of fact his boss didn’t like it much at all. Too “square” he said. Square? I countered. Yeah, you know, you look out the window of the plane and all you see are square pieces of land. No twists, no turns, everything was square, not like around here. Yes, I said nodding, I see exactly what you mean. After a five minute discussion he finally asked which grade of gas I wanted and how much. You gotta love how totally unfriendly the people are around here. At least that’s what people told me to expect. How nice to be surprised for a change.

And those are only two examples from today alone. There are many more that I could recount here such as our mailman who introduced himself and welcomed us to the neighborhood [his name is Dennis], or the man [Rick] that owns the dry cleaners when he found out I was from Colorado asked my opinion on whether they should choose Aspen or Vail for their ski holiday at Christmas [and in exchange he told me about a restaurant that they held their son’s Communion celebration in], or the elderly customer in the wine store that offered to carry out my case of wine since he couldn’t bear to see my ‘nice choices’ end up on the pavement, but I think you’ve got the idea.

SIGH. No wonderful aroma of brewing coffee to awaken me this morning. You see, that’s Rick’s job as he usually prepares the coffee the night before and sets the timer on the coffee machine. But Rick is travelling for a few days and I forgot to make up the coffee last night. I miss him when he’s gone, and not just because of the coffee! The dogs did allow me to sleep a bit later, so that was good. It’s a pretty morning out there with a light coating of dew and the sun is out. No dogs have fallen into the pool in two days. These are things to be thankful for as I start a new day.

The cable TV is still not working. I know, I know, it’s so ridiculous. Today is day 12 without it. I have talked myself blue in the face and finally, I think I may have made a bit of progress with one of their supervisors last night.

They kept telling us we needed a new cable laid and we kept telling them the cable was not the problem. On Monday a very nice tech came out and had a brilliant idea. He ran a new cable on top of the ground from our box out front directly to both TVs, just to finally prove whether or not the problem was in the cable. It wasn’t. We still didn’t have any glimmer of the digital channels and the analog channels are so fuzzy you go cross-eyed just looking at them. He wrote down on the work order what he did and referred the problem out to another department. Herein lies the problem. Another great tech had come out the week before and told us that it was not in the cable but somewhere in the box, and no one read the fine print. All they saw was “referred to such-and-such”. No one was reading what the techs were putting on the work order!

So, last night when they put me through to yet another supervisor and he started smarting off about how I didn’t know what the problem was and to let him explain ONCE AGAIN that we needed a new cable, etc etc., I saw red. I felt like a bull does when the bullfighter waves a red cape in front of him. I blew up. I yelled in his ear “LISTEN TO ME FOR JUST ONE MINUTE!!!!!!” and proceeded to tell him about the experiment that we had performed just the other day. He said he had no knowledge of what I was telling him [what happened to the work order with all this explained?]. I asked him if he wanted a copy of MY work order since it spelled it out pretty plainly on mine. He said no thank you, I need to check this out with my field supervisor and I"ll call you back in 20 minutes. Yeah, right. But, the phone rang in 10 minutes and he started by apologizing to me and saying that I had been correct [you’re darn tootin’ I was!] and that the problem was in our box and he would have a crew out within 24 hours to work on the problem. HURRAY! That was a major breakthrough for someone to finally concede that the cable was NOT the problem. So, the saga continues. We’ll see what happens next.

On the bright side, I am going to lunch in Warwick with Kim [the neighbor from across the street] and that should be fun. After that, maybe a dip in the pool if the weather holds. We’re supposed to have t-storms later on, so swimming sounds like it won’t be possible.

No…it’s not a misspelling on my part due to too much wine tonight. Don’t I wish. No, in fact, “Kimnapped” is a phrase coined by friends of my neighbor, Kim. When we went to their house for the Memorial Day BBQ, Kim had asked me to join them on a jaunt they were making to PA to a annual flea market. I regretfully declined the invite due to driving to NY to pick up Mom the day after the jaunt. It was going to be an all day thing, leaving at 7:15 and arriving home late in the afternoon. I just felt I couldn’t leave the dogs again for that period of time. Overhearing Kim and I talking about the approximate time we might return, one of her friends that I had just met nudged me and said, “Just so you know for future reference,” she whispered in my ear, “anywhere you go with Kim, be prepared to be KIMNAPPED. You never arrive home when you think you are going to. All bets are off.” Okay, I said as I stored that tidbit of info into my saturated brain cells. I’ll keep that in mind.

Yesterday I called Kim to thank her again for making us so welcome and to ask her where she bought her chili for the All the Way Hot Dogs. She said she had just tried phoning me only to find the line busy. What a coincidence! We agreed to have lunch today. Great, she said, I’ll pick you up and we’ll have lunch in Warwick. Where have you been already? I told her we hadn’t eaten out much just yet. She swung by my house at around 12:30 and we made our way to the quaint and very cozy town of Warwick, NY. [Home of the Sunday market in case you’re keeping track.] She had chosen a little French restaurant that Rick and I had spied on our last Sunday market day. Tucked away on a quaint street, the restaurant has outside bistro-style seating, and when we first came across it on market day, a couple were sitting outside sipping bowls of café au lait. Both Rick and I promised that next time we visited the market we were going there for breakfast! We had a nice relaxed lunch, and got to know each other a little better. We discovered that both of our husbands were out of town and frequently travelled. After lunch we went through the unique little shops that line the main street. Quite a few home decorating shops, a nice little shop offering fine writing papers and the like along with office supplies, some trendy little clothing boutiques, and lastly, a French bakery.

We got home around 4:00 p.m. There were 2 messages on my machine; both from Rick. The first one said well, you must be out scooping or having a swim, call me. The second message said, well either you’re out scooping or you’ve been Kimnapped, so call me when you get in. I have to admit, I would gladly be “Kimnapped” any day. It was a very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon. And it sure beats “out scooping” with the dogs! Kim and I vowed to check with each other as to when our spouses would be out of town and get together again for either lunch or dinner.

Oh, yes, a couple of things in closing.  Just for the record and to keep you all updated, nothing was done about our cable today. I called again tonight. I am starting to turn into the Cable TV Shrew. I hate this. And, it started to rain shortly after I got home, so no swim in the pool.